Rob Fitzpatrick 

The Triffids, Black Swan

(Domino)
  
  

The Black Swan

Black Swan was intended to be the Triffids' White Album. As is the often the way with such things, it wasn't - though the band's leader, the late David McComb, certainly had no shortage of ideas on how acoustic and electronic music could be put together. (Too many ideas, in fact: half of this could be painlessly dropped.) As cousins of The The and Lloyd Cole's sweepingly dramatic, lyrical, 1980s indie-rock, the Triffids are placed neatly between Orange Juice's shorts'n'sandals romanticism and pin-sharp 2008 indie-pop such as the Elephants. But they're also capable of producing some wonderfully strange music. Good Fortune Rose has a beautiful vocal from the band's keyboard player, Jill Burt; a rather charming banjo part; New Order melodies; and Run-DMC kick-drums - a sadly rare occurrence in pop. Fairytale Love invents Tindersticks, and The Spinning Top Song throbs like Yello. Falling Over You even features a rap. In 1989, it seems, anything was possible.

 

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